Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life

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This is a brilliant book! I’ve been a fan of Jay’s for years as an avid viewer of The Repair Shop, but I didn’t really know anything at all about the Jay underneath the flat cap! He has never read a book (including his autobiography – he told his life story to a ghostwriter) and once took a letter he knew was urgent from the hospital out on to the street to ask for help from a passerby because he had no one at home to help. On The Repair Shop, the production team brief him verbally before each scene rather than provide written notes. Blades, Jay (27 July 2021). Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life. Pan Macmillan UK. ISBN 9781760987633. He learned the hard way that as human beings, men are also allowed to feel emotions and deserve to be in tune with their feelings and display them. I have a major question, however, viz. how, given that undiagnosed dyslexia had left him more or less unable to read or write, he was accepted into university to study Philosophy and Criminology. Surely he should have acquired adequate reading skills first?

Jay Blades books and biography | Waterstones

Against the odds, though, he took these circumstances to grow and create change within the communities he worked and cared for. In one book, Jay shows the very best and the very worst of society - the amazing impact Gerald and his family have had on Jay, through to his absent father and the horrific racism and prejudices that have sadly followed him throughout his life. So many people in similar circumstances would have given up and not even tried to make anything of their lives, but fortunately for Jay (and for us!) he has often had the support and the love of the right people at the right time in his life. a b c d e f g h i j k l Saner, Emine (7 September 2020). " 'I spent a long time being this macho man': Jay Blades on love, loss and the liberating power of tears". The Guardian . Retrieved 26 December 2020.THOUGHTS: Read this book slowly. Take the time to truly assimilate the personal journey of the phenomenal flawed human being who presents and carries the TV sensation" The Repair Shop" on his shoulder. All in all, I think you get a very interesting insight into the actual human that is Jay Blades, not the TV persona, not a public persona, the real deal. I think it's a little light on self-recrimination, but, as someone said, " Everyone is necessarily the hero of [their] own life story." and I do think that the book indicates that he's trying to live by the credo that he closes the book out with: " all you can do is be good".

Books — Jay Blades

Using a system developed for use in prisons by the Shannon Trust, Jay commits to learn to read with Read Easy, a charity whose volunteers do one-to-one coaching. Along the way, he revisits key moments in his life that were shaped by not being able to read: the ‘learner’ class at school, the dead-end jobs he had to take because he had no qualifications, and not being able to read his children bedtime stories. Daughter Zola is now 15, and Jay wants to read her a story before she reaches adulthood on her next birthday. The fabric of Jay's life apparently constitutes a weft of ebullient happiness anchored down by the warp of failure and depression. There are success stories and moments of barrel-bottom-scraping, and it's all told in the most genial and friendly of tones, using a very matter-of-fact London vernacular - so watch out, because there's a lot of unexpected cursing! The Jay of The Repair Shop is a screen persona that hides the street-friendly real-life Jay! Finding success when the odds for it to happen are against someone shows the true character, courage, and vulnerability needed to make it happen. Furniture dealer turned TV star Jay Blades chats about his style in Wolverhampton". Shropshire Star. 18 August 2018 . Retrieved 31 October 2019. a b "The Repair Shop's Jay Blades reveals incredible story discovering he has 25 siblings". MSN. Archived from the original on 13 July 2020 . Retrieved 12 July 2020.Good morning all, I'm 50 today and I wanted to post this photo with my head down, (don't worry I'm not sad) I'm doing this as a mark of respect to EVERYONE, that got me here. 🙏🏽 Thank You. 😊 Also in that year he released a memoir, Making It: How Love, Kindness and Community Helped Me Repair My Life, published by Pan Macmillan UK. [12] Jones, Emma (19 April 2020). "Jay Blades' degree in criminology led him on path to star in The Repair Shop". Daily Mirror . Retrieved 11 September 2020. Exclusive: The Repair Shop's Jay Blades marries Lisa Zbozen in romantic Barbados wedding". 4 December 2022.